How can we make Microsoft Teams better?

Complete Skype for Business Integration into Teams

Honestly, this is a tall order due to the fact that Teams was not launched this way in the first place, but my real world experience, and feedback from the field, is that having Skype-for-Business-like functions in Teams (chat/Presence/etc) be separate from Skype for Business itself is not only confusing for many users, but inhibits adoption. Users want to consolidate the number of apps they use, not increase it. I personally find this to be true.

Teams is an incredible tool with so much potential, but living and breathing in Skype for Business, like so many of us do, Teams isn't a completely organic feel due to the disparity of chat identities. If I could go into Teams, manage my projects/files/OneNote, engage in Chats, see and join my meetings, engage in Audio/Video calls (I can do all this now), AND THEN also place and receive all my PSTN calls, Teams would be my new permanent application for doing all this, and email would start to fade into the background.

This is the direction I truly hope to see things go. Teams' potential is incredible, but realizing its full potential, in my humble opinion, relies on complete Skype for Business integration.

127 comments

I agree, we don't need more apps at work, we need less and more streamlined apps, teams seems so close to right, but for now skype just has more functionality, particularly screen sharing without voice/video, screen control and conversation history in outlook (makes it searchable). Skype is also smaller so if you are chatting it doesn't take up your whole screen where teams seems to be an app you work in exclusively

Could we add all the Skype function into Team, so I don't need to open 2 applications at same time? I do like Team more.
Skype has it's advantage like easy to find people to chat, and desktop sharing, etc. I hope you can combine them into one app.

With time spent and the launch here our users are getting the Skype-like features. I'm pleasantly surprised to find technology averse dept and location managers using voice, video and screen sharing with Teams.

I have used Skype for business for a few years now, and share screens back and forth all day long. being able to share screen outside of a meeting like skype for business is very important to me.
please add this option.
-Justin Mason

I'm concerned that this will be confusing regardless of the implementation. Notification sync'ing between the two has potential, but conversation history? S4B has no concept of a channel, so what channel in Teams is the S4B history going to sync with? A private Teams chat with all members of the S4B chat? And visa-versa?

I agree with most of the comments here. User Adoption is slowed because of multiple apps for different things! I love Teams and want to use it heavily. Please look very closely at this and do what you can to integrate the two. Don't make "just another cool thing".

Agreed, but not above "Chat". It should replace "Chat". Look at how Facebook Messenger web app does it. There is just one list of people. Default sort is by Recent. Then throw in the ability to sort other ways, and the ability to toggle on and off the people you've never chatted with

Agreed, but not above "Chat". It should replace "Chat". Look at how Facebook Messenger web app does it. There is just one list of people. Default sort is by Recent. Then throw in the ability to sort other ways, and the ability to toggle on and off the people you've never chatted with.

Any new development in Teams Meetings / communication, needs a Skype Biz counterpart. This will be very confusing for users if they can only do certain items in certain locations. This is one of the huge reasons Yammer hasn't taken off at my company. The yammer presence is different than SfB. The Yammer chat is separate form the SfB chat. I know Yammer was an acquisition, but Teams is built form the ground up.

Yes Please. The faster you do the faster we can start making it happen in large scale internally. It is a hazzle to let user understand the differens between the two types of skype, or even 3 if the count also goes together with the Skype consumer.
So yes please.

I want to respectfully disagree with Eric who said: "There are many times when people will want Skype and not Teams and vice versa. Nothing wrong with options."

My opinon is ... there *is* something wrong with having options. In fact this is the achilles heel of O365 today, there are too many ways of doing the same thing. Erik says "There are many times when people will want Skype and not Teams and vice versa", but doesn't offer any such example.

Seems like an obvious thing to do. At my place we use Cisco's telephony and UC solution (Jabber+Webex) but as we're already paying for O365 I suspect we'll consolidate at some point by getting rid of Cisco. Josh's most pertinent point is "Users want to consolidate the number of apps they use, not increase it", I couldn't agree more.
I used Teams for the very first time today and my impression of it is that its more than just a Slack compete - its nothing short of a client for the whole of O365, so the telephony part needs to be in there too.

Completely agree with this point. Our current trial of Teams reveals just how frustrating this is. We have pilot users on SfB and Teams who report this as the only reason they don't want to jump onto teams permanently. The multiple status, assume they can see chat history from teams in Skype / Outlook. Many prefer the chat UI in Skype (small, compact) can chat to many people and not have a full window open, but when in teams, want to carry on those conversations. You can already join Skype meetings from within Teams - this is good. Wanting to roll this globally, but - this issue is a road block. Will kill adoption and send people back to other services again.

I could not agree more. As users are being asked to adopt and or have to decide which application to use for collaboration, it only generates frustration and confusion. Incorporating all SfB functionalities into MS Teams will only make things more simple for users to live and work within one application.

Josh said this very well. The point on inhibiting adoption is key. When you have companies working with 1 tool for 5+ years, getting them to move away from it is very difficult. You'll have those excited to move to a better tool and then you'll have others who ask "But I can chat and make calls with Skype for Business, so why move?".

I know it was mentioned in a similar post that the intent is to keep SFB and Teams separate entities but... as someone who supports my immediate department group, the end users need 1 thing, not multiple.